From CBIA News, May 2003

Surviving the temporary loss of key personnel

By Bonnie Kreitler

Free-lance writer in Easton

Small businesses run lean in lean times. Very literally, every person counts. The departure of a key employee may mean not only loss of sales, credit and growth opportunities but also loss of the business itself. Losing key employees outright is difficult enough. When an employee steps out of the business only temporarily due to illness, injury, family difficulties or military duty, planning and survival logistics become even more complex.

Experts offer the following advice on how to survive such a crisis:

1. Know the law. Most requests for extended temporary leave will probably fall under either the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) or the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). These laws cover issues such as how long an employer must hold a job open, whether the employee must be reinstated in the same job, and whether the employee is entitled to a continuation of benefits.

CBIA employment specialist Mark Soycher says antidiscrimination laws covering gender, disability, age and pregnancy may also come into play when employees go out on temporary leave. Knowing in advance that your personnel policies are in compliance with applicable laws (and administering them consistently) removes one source of stress when an employee requests a leave. 

2. Know your options. “We’ll work it out” isn’t a good enough response, says Paul Sessions, director of the Center for Family Business at the University of New Haven. Small-business owners are typically in denial about some problems that have the potential to cripple their companies. Sessions says you need to brainstorm, strategize and develop a disaster plan you can quickly activate. Among the actions you might take are identifying potential sources of temporary labor and cross training your employees. If an individual contractor or supplier is a key person to your business, split the work or the orders so that your business always has an alternative.

3. Anticipate things you’d rather not think about. Sessions also advises developing a little “healthy paranoia.” Ask each employee what impact it would have on the business if he or she didn’t show up for work tomorrow. Factor their observations into your planning. 

In the current military climate, Carl Venditto, Connecticut chair of Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, advises business owners to take an inventory of employees in the military reserves. With that information in hand, you can brainstorm how to keep the business running if those employees are called up for active duty. This can be crucial to good planning, since the USERRA requires that a reservist be reinstated after an absence of as long as five years.

When employees request leave for military duty, Venditto advises you to ask them to request a set of their orders to give you as a planning document. He cautions that a reservist’s initial deployment can be extended. However, talking in advance about how long the employee will be away, what other staff person would be best qualified to handle his or her workload, and discussing re-employment issues helps both parties.

4. Develop a company policy. Be proactive rather than reactive about employee requests for leave by developing your extended-leave policy in advance. When there is an established policy in place, negotiation of any details between the business and the employee is more likely to be congenial. Venditto notes that both employers and employees make sacrifices when there is extended leave. While the employer is worrying about keeping the business going, the employee is often worrying about how his or her family will manage without a salary or benefits. Leave policies that go beyond the letter of the law can raise company morale and strengthen employee loyalty. 

For example, Ulbrich Stainless Steels & Specialty Metals Inc. in North Haven sits down with reservists who are called up to discuss their needs. They might pay the difference between an employee’s military pay and the amount the employee would have earned if he or she had stayed on the job. In another case, they might continue health benefits for an employee’s family until the employee returned to work after active duty. 

“We’re a family company, and we believe in doing right by our employees,” says Chief Operating Officer Chris Ulbrich. “I know it sounds corny. But this is the least that we can do in the defense of our country.” 

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